One mid-winter morning, when user logins had slowed to an
icy trickle and the mountain was peaceful beneath
its blanket of snow, host master Yishi-Shing left his
servers in the care of ten capable monks and set out to
inspect the state of a distant abbey.

Arriving, he found an unexpected whirlwind of activity.
Serious defects plagued the abbey’s software. User activity
caused minor errors throughout the
database; these errors were compounded by subsequent user
actions, ultimately spreading the corruption to
highly-sensitive tables. Monks were poring over log files,
running emergency data repair scripts, arguing at
whiteboards, hammering away at workstations. Desperate
patches were released at a frantic pace, resulting in
further disasters.

“What of testing?” asked Yishi-Shing.

“No time! No people! No money!” said the abbot, who
tightened the straps on his rollerskates and took
off down the hall in response to the ringing of another
alarm-bell.